DVD Reviews - I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell & More

If you missed them, or live outside the Leader-Post circulation area, here are my latest DVD reviews.

THE INVENTION OF LYING (Blu-ray)

Warner Bros.

Rating 3 (out of five)

Despite the invention of writer/co-director Ricky Gervais, creator of the hit series The Office, this is a hit-and-miss fantasy comedy.

Gervais plays Mark, writer of dull historical scripts for a dull documentary company. He’s unremarkable in every way and also short and tubby.

In fact, to his co-workers, family and friends Mark is a bit of a loser — and they don’t hesitate to keep reminding him of the fact. That’s because Mark lives in a world in which everyone tells the absolute truth, even if it’s brutally wounding.

After a dismal blind date with the gorgeous Anna (Jennifer Garner) who prefers the superior genes of the handsome smoothie Brad Kessler (Rob Lowe), Mark loses his job and faces eviction from his apartment. Life seems to be spinning out of control, but on the spur of the moment he unexpectedly tells a lie in the bank, overestimating the amount of money he has in his account. To his amazement, the bank believes him and hands over the cash.

When he tells his dying mother about a wonderful afterlife to ease her fears, doctors and nurses overhear him and Mark is treated alike a visionary with an important message for humanity. Mark’s description of a world run by “the man in the sky” is laugh-out-loud funny. The lies snowball and so do the complications.

It’s all a bit weird, though there are some decent featurettes here including a hysterical blooper reel (Gervais laughs like a hyena).

WWII IN HD

History Channel

Rating 5 (out of five)

We’ve become so used to seeing scratchy black and white images of the Second World War that it sometimes seems like a different world, far removed from us.

This three-disc documentary set featuring more than seven hours of colour footage will change all that.

Much of this film has never been seen before and is the result of a two-year worldwide search for colour footage from Allied, German, Japanese and other sources. Converted to high definition, the results are stunning, from the rise of Nazism in Germany to the ferocious hand-to-hand combat of the Pacific islands after Pearl Harbor and the grim battles in Europe after D-Day.

There’s a lot of graphic stuff here, including Nazi executions of innocent civilians by hanging and firing squad to the ghastly discoveries of the death camps where millions were murdered by Adolf Hitler’s thugs.

At the core of the series are the real-life stories of 12 Americans, from soldiers to a nurse and a war correspondent, who lived and breathed its tragedies and triumphs.

What’s particularly striking in colour are the images of young men and women of many nations and how alive and vibrant they seem — just like the young people of today. It’s sobering to think how many of them perished between 1939 and 1945.

A couple of featurettes on the discovery and restoration of the film sources are included. Though not on the same scale as Ken Burns’ epic 15-hour series The War (PBS, 2007), this is a memorable set.

I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL

E1 Entertainment

Rating 0 (out of five)

This is a gross, stupid movie whose target male audience must be a) male, b) drunk and c) obnoxious.

It’s based on the notorious sex-ploits of American blogger and author Tucker Max — who fits all of the above criteria. He’s something of a hero to frat boys, a hard-drinking pig who apparently can talk to women like dirt, but still get hundreds of them (by his own score) into bed or the back seat of the nearest car with ease. Now 34, Max still acts like an out-of-control 18-year-old.

He’s honest enough to admit being obnoxious and says “for the most part, I am all about myself in bed.” The book of the same name became a best seller, but this 2009 movie bombed in theatres.

This mess combines several of Max’s sordid stories into some kind of plot: Max (Matt Czuchry) takes about-to-be married friend Dan (Geoff Stults) and recently dumped and depressed Drew (Jesse Bradford) to a Salem strip club. It’s supposed to be a stag celebration for Dan, but instead of taking care of his friend, Max is really trying to track down a dwarf stripper he wants to have sex with.

Max finds and beds the dwarf, Drew goes home with another stripper (not a dwarf) and Dan is left alone to get monumentally drunk and thrown out of the club. Police later find him urinating in public and throw him in the drunk tank, where’s he’s beaten up.

Next day, Dan cancels Max’s invitation to the wedding. Duh

Max soldiers on with his sad-sack life, picking up a married hottie (played by former real-life porn star Traci Lords). But before they can consumate their 15-minute relationship, they are both struck by a graphic episode of explosive diarrhea (the beer they’d both shared had been spiked by a woman Max insulted in the bar). Yuk … need I go on?

Several scenes too bad to make the theatrical version of the movie are included as extras.

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.